Lusaka Protocol - Implementation

Implementation

United Nations Angola Verification Mission III and MONUA spent $1.5 billion overseeing implementation of the protocol. The UN largely did not enforce the provision prohibiting UNITA from buying foreign arms and both sides continued to build up their stockpile. The United Nations Security Council did not authorize a significant peacekeeping force in the area until 1995 and delayed full deployment until late 1996. U.N. Special Representative Blondin Beye covered up human rights violations because, as a UN official told Human Rights Watch in 1995, "the situation is too sensitive for serious human rights monitoring. Making public what we know could undermine the peace process and put us back to war." In May 1998 Beye changed his mind and the UN began reporting abuses. Three months after the government signed the treaty, in February 1995 Chief of Staff General João de Matos complained that peace would only be achieved when the government defeated UNITA militarily, calling the protocol a "mistake." By December of 1998, the government and UNITA were again in a state of war. The UN's Human Rights Division did not publish any reports from January to July 1999 because fighting prevented them from investigating. Following the protocol the government and UNITA both engaged in the indiscriminate killing of civilians, torture, and other human rights violations.

Not only did UNITA not demobilize but it purchased a large amount of weapons in 1996 and 1997 from private sources in Albania and Bulgaria, and from Zaire, South Africa, Republic of the Congo, Zambia, Togo, and Burkina Faso. In October 1997 the UN imposed travel sanctions on UNITA leaders, but the UN waited until July 1998 to limit UNITA's exportation of diamonds and freeze UNITA bank accounts. While the U.S. government gave USD $250 million to UNITA between 1986 to 1991, UNITA made $1.72 billion between 1994 and 1999 exporting diamonds, primarily through Zaire to Europe. At the same time the Angolan government received large amounts of weapons from the governments of Belarus, Brazil, Bulgaria, the People's Republic of China, and South Africa. While no arms shipment to the government violated the protocol, no country informed the U.N. Register on Conventional Weapons as required.

In March 1995 UNITA militants shot and destroyed an UNAVEM III helicopter in Quibaxe. Military leaders met on January 10, 1995 and in February in Waku Kungo to make sure both sides continued to observe the ceasefire. Savimbi and dos Santos met four times after the helicopter downing; in Lusaka on May 6, in Gabon in August, in Brussels, Belgium in September, and in March 1996 in Libreville, Gabon. Between the first and second meetings dos Santos offered Savimbi the position of Vice President, but Savimbi turned him down in August 1996 during the party's Third Congress.

Executive Outcomes, a private military company, had 400-500 mercenaries in Angola fighting on behalf of the Angolan government until January 1996 in violation of the protocol's repatriation provision.

Savimbi and dos Santos spoke on the phone in December 1997 and reached an agreement on January 9, 1998 to implement the protocol, but fighting resumed and the peace process ended.